Throughout our history, the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) has worked to make authoritative science information ever more efficiently available to researchers and the public alike. Our core mission – ensuring access to and preservation of U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) research results – has not changed. But the technology we apply to that mission has changed a lot over the past 20 years. By adopting Internet technology carefully and early, pioneering new advances in that technology to meet our needs and partnering with other stakeholders in the scientific and technical information community (STI), OSTI aspires to achieve our mission better than ever before.

OSTI’s involvement in public access is accelerating! The week of June 24th, 2013, The White House recognized Champions of Change: Open Science at an event in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. OSTI’s Director Walt Warnick was invited to nominate individuals who had been instrumental in championing public access to open science. As a result of Walt’s involvement in Public Access to scientific information, he was invited to attend this important event. Two notable Champions of Change who were honored were Jack Andraka, a Maryland high school student who at age 15 created a novel paper sensor that detects pancreatic, ovarian, and lung cancer in 5 minutes for as little as 3 cents; Jack has a huge Twitter following and is a passionate speaker about open access, STEM education and universal Internet availability. The other is Paul Ginsparg who created arXiv.org, an open access e-print network that serves as the primary daily information feed for global communities of researchers in physics, mathematics, computer science, and related fields and is the most popular e-print server in the world.

Perhaps the most beautiful and eerie displays of light in our sky are a phenomenon known as the auroras. This natural glow of light in the sky in high latitude regions usually displays ribbons of colors from a fluorescent green to brilliant purple to a vivid crimson somewhat like an unexpected beautiful sunrise or sunset. Observers often call it the greatest show on Earth.

Auroras are triggered by geomagnetic storms when gusts of solar plasma wind strike the Earth’s magnetic field; charged particles rain down over the north and south magnetic poles, lighting up the atmosphere and causing the air to glow.

A database and its supporting website can get periodic makeovers and sometimes it can even undergo rebirth! The DOE Data Explorer (DDE) has just emerged from a rebirth process, and we are proud to announce its transformation. The first version of DDE was launched in 2008 with the mission of guiding users to collections of publicly available, DOE-sponsored data and other non-text information.

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